4x4 versus 2x2

[ceedubindustrie]

Hey y'all-

I'd like to introduce a thought experiment I had today that reflects both 1) my naive assumptions about recording to tape, and 2) that I haven't brought my 80-8 up to spec, yet.

I'm pretty sure that on a half-inch eight track tape, recording four 'left' channels and four 'right' channels does not equal a stereo recording on a half-inch two track machine. I'd love to know if any of you have experimented with this before. What did it sound like? Did anything cool come of it?

If you haven't tried it, what do you suppose would come of it?

Thanks for lending me your computational power.

-C

 

[jpmorris]

I haven't tried it, but it's supposed to cause all kinds of weird phase cancellation problems. You would also have issues playing it back on a real half-track machine as you'd have background noise from the guard bands which won't have been erased.